Podcast #109: Liam Neeson

What better way to celebrate the first podcast of 2019 than with a huge technical disaster! We blew out our recording this time, so it’s best to pretend the sound on this episode is using a deliberate Bad Cellphone Connection filter in a meta nod to our episode’s subject: Liam Neeson! Other than the 80’s Miami Vice (more meta!) brick phone sound quality, this is a regular episode with all the fixins: movie news, a discussion on the career of Liam Neeson, movie jail courtroom drama, a game of threatening phone calls, and so much more!

The backlash proves that nobody is allowed to be imperfect anymore. Nobody is allowed to be hurt, conflicted and find a way out the other side. Nobody is allowed to be a product of their time and place. Nobody is allowed to screw up and learn from it.

I think it’s more complex than that. In Neeson’s case this time I think it has a lot to do with him addressing the primal revenge fantasy without giving equal (or any) time to the racist side of his experience. I think it feels to many people like he’s only half addressed what was going on in his story, and leaves the question open as to what he thinks about that now. Also, press junkets are not the best place for these kinds of revelations – something Neeson’s experienced before, making a repeat all the more baffling.

I also think social media response to any controversy is always one big tangled ball of electrified wire, and it is often impossible to separate the outrage train from those that have legitimate concerns/criticism. This level of connectedness is a brand-new paradigm in human history and we will be navigating how to adjust the social contract in it for some time to come. This means more unfairness, there’s no avoiding it.

Hey Skelton, It’s pleasing to see someone show some balance in their interpretation of ill-judged and stupidly insensitive remarks.

The British press has been very unsympathetic including even some of the rapid tabloids. The interviewer did a very morally outraged interview in which her millennial outrage in the midst of a troglodyte like Neeson was startlingly evident.

Coming from Ballymena in the seventies Neeson had probably never even seen a black man when this supposed event took place. Britain was and still is a very racist country. It’s kind of a national hobby which had now been complicated with the alterations to our social contract.

I do think, and hope, that there are more nuances to Neeson’s story that the limited time of the junket reveal didn’t allow for exploring in detail.

Given that there are many marginalized groups that, due to social media, now have a voice they’ve never had in the past, I try not to dismiss any side before giving both serious thought. “Outrage machine” is too easy an answer, and too often used to drown out legitimate criticism.

Except for that guy who insinuated he’d kill his children if they came out to him as gay. He’s a complete piece of shit.

(And I’m not even going to try and pretend like I understand the colossal fuckstorm that is Brexit…)